Gunter Sachs

His father, Willy Sachs, ran a ball bearing and motor factory that had been founded by his grandfather Ernst Sachs, who had developed the "Torpedo" bicycle freewheel hub. His maternal great-grandfather was Adam Opel, the founder of the automobile company of the same name. As a result of his parents' separation from 1935, Sachs grew up in Switzerland with his mother Eleonor von Opel. After attending Swiss boarding schools, Sachs first studied mathematics and then economics at the University of Lausanne. Sachs then moved to the Federal Republic of Germany to begin an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic at the Stuttgart company Bosch in 1955. He then completed a banking apprenticeship at Commerzbank Munich. He attended an interpreting course at the University of Nantes, which he completed with a diploma. Since after his father's death, his older brother, Ernst Wilhelm Sachs, ran the Sachs company's business in Schweinfurt from 1958 onwards, Sachs concentrated on the company's foreign division. He also joined the board of the holding company Sachs AG Munich. During the 1950s he distinguished himself as a brilliant tennis player. In 1954 he also broke the track record twice in the two-man bobsleigh on the St. Moritz run. In 1955 he married Anne-Marie Faure, with whom he had a son and who died in 1958. In 1959, Gunter Sachs won the junior European championship title in the two-man bobsleigh as a member of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club. In 1961, Sachs took over the presidency of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club. In the 1960s, Sachs was in the spotlight of the tabloid press because of his extravagant lifestyle. On July 14, 1966, he married the French film star Brigitte Bardot in Las Vegas with great fanfare. The marriage ended in divorce in 1969. In the same year he married the Swedish model Mirja Larsson for the third time. Together, Sachs commuted between the domiciles spread around the world. Sachs then had two other sons with her, Christian Gunnar (1971) and Claus Alexander (1982). In the 1970s, as an art dealer, he became a special supporter of Pop Art. He opened modern art galleries in Hamburg's Milchstrasse and Munich's Villa Stuck. In 1972, Gunter Sachs was the first gallerist to exhibit the American artist Andy Warhol in Germany. This relationship resulted in a close friendship, just like with Salvador Dali. Sachs became a Swiss citizen in 1976. Sachs also demonstrated his own great entrepreneurial skills: from 1965 to 1981 he built up an international chain of fashion boutiques called "Micmac", which ultimately had over 400 branches. From the mid-1970s onwards, the Sachs brothers gradually sold their shareholdings in the company, which they had sold completely by around the turn of the millennium. In the meantime, Gunter Sachs had long since made a name for himself in the artistic field. Sachs had already begun to develop artistic ambitions in the fields of film and photography in the 1960s. He created seven documentaries, some of which were award-winning, which focus on, among other things, South Sea cultures and other anthropological-ethnic topics. In 1972 he received the first prize from the International Olympic Committee for his film "Happening in White" (1970), a film about winter sports. Sachs' interest in photography dates back to his school days. In 1974 he achieved his international breakthrough in this field through an exhibition at Photokina. His brother Ernst Wilhelm died in an avalanche accident in 1977. By 1988, the art photographer had published four volumes of photographs. The artist toured the images developed in his Munich photo studio "MM 14 Factory" at numerous exhibitions throughout Europe. In addition to film and photography, Sachs also developed a strong interest in European contemporary art, which also brought him into contact with Yves Klein and numerous other artists. With his wife Mirja, Sachs founded the "Mirja Sachs Foundation for Children in Need" in 1987. With an unusual initiative, Sachs managed to get himself onto the bestseller lists of the German, French and English book trade in the mid-1990s: in 1995 he founded the "Institute for the empirical and mathematical investigation of the possible truth of astrology in relation to human character", which, in cooperation with independent state and private statistical institutes, sought to scientifically substantiate the connection between zodiac signs and behavioral structure in a large-scale study ("The Astrology File"). In the fall of 2005, Gunter Sachs published his autobiography entitled "My Life." His art photographs turned out to be a crowd puller. The exhibition "Art is Female" in the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts was seen by around 70,000 visitors in 2008. Gunter Sachs shot himself in Gstaad on May 7, 2011, at the age of 78. In a farewell letter, Sachs justified his suicide with references to an illness from "A".